Sixty-one years ago today, Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his farewell address to the American people. "Ike," as he was affectionately known, had served his country long and well: Counting his four years at West Point, Eisenhower put in 42 years in the U.S. Army and eight in the White House.
When elected president in 1952, he was a political outsider. So much so that many Americans, including Harry Truman, had assumed during the war years that Ike was a New Deal Democrat. He was not. He turned out to be a fiscally conservative Republican, whose skepticism of big government extended to the military. I've written previously in this space about Eisenhower's famous "military industrial complex" speech delivered on this date in 1961, but I haven't done so since Jan. 6, 2021, an event that provides another prism through which to view the 34th U.S. president.
President Truman had predicted that the five-star general replacing him in the Oval Office would have trouble adjusting to life atop a bureaucracy that didn't follow orders as readily as junior officers do in the military -- not to mention sharing authority with the legislative and judicial branches. In a sense, Truman was prescient. As president, Ike's own Supreme Court appointees disappointed him, and his relations with Congress had rough patches.
Yet Dwight Eisenhower was a fast study, and a popular president, and he learned that it was counterproductive to take legislative defeats personally. He rarely criticized Democratic congressional leaders in public, even when they did the same to him. "What I plead for are the programs that I believe to be good for America," he said at a 1957 press conference. "And now it happens that I believe the Republicans have a better program than the Democrats, and to that extent, I am going to be partisan, but primarily I am for the program."
On Jan. 17, 1961, Eisenhower described his dealings with Democrats on Capitol Hill in conciliatory terms -- and on a personal note.
"Our people expect their president and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation," he said. "My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate postwar period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.
"In this final relationship," Ike added, "the Congress and the administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together."
It seems quaint, doesn't it? Yet one can't help but wonder whether today's politicians would be more effective if they restrained their rhetorical excess. Or maybe not: The two major political parties are more polarized than they were in the mid-20th century, and those policy differences cause passions to boil over. All the more reason that presidential transitions, particularly involving a change of party, must be handled "delicately" -- lest you break democracy's spell.
Donald J. Trump was infamously indelicate during America's most recent presidential election, one which he insisted as recently as this weekend was stolen from him. I predict that this will seem like an odd obsession to historians, given that Joe Biden bested President Trump by 7 million votes in the popular tally. But I suppose losing every swing state by whisker does strange things to a candidate. In any event, much has been made of Trump's Jan. 6 speech exhorting his followers to "march" on the U.S. Capitol, presumably with the aggrieved president at the head of the column. Instead, Trump motorcaded back to the warmth of the White House. Hundreds of those who heeded his call now face criminal charges.
In his own farewell address, after issuing the obligatory hopes for the new administration (he extended his "best wishes" as well as good "luck" -- "a very important word," Trump said mysteriously), he spent all of 26 words discussing Jan. 6. "All Americans were horrified by the assault on our Capitol," Trump said. "Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. It can never be tolerated."
He then delivered a long and boastful speech lauding his own tenure in office. A campaign speech, really. It reminded me of a song by Dan Hicks, a puckish send-up of country music. "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?"
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.
